Should We Dump Iron in Galapagos Waters?

NOT TO DUMP! Is there even a question? All of these "solutions" fool people into thinking they can avoid the only real solution of all: decrease our use of and dependence on fossil fuels. Hopefully there will be enough opposition that this idea falls dead quickly.

I'd say not to dump because all that dead plankton has to go somewhere. Ideally, to the ocean floor where it would sequester carbon, (though likely messing up sea floor ecology) but just as likely cause an oxygen-free zone as bacteria eats it (releasing methane).

Wouldn't it be more responsible in the long run to conserve energy and use alternatives?

And yet perhaps nature beat us to this idea.

Unfortunately for Planktos, the ocean is populated by creatures like teleosts, crustaceans, mollusks, and others, which eat plankton, take up oxygen, and produce carbon dioxide (as a result of their respiration), much of which bubbles up to the ocean surface and returns to the atmosphere, as CO2 is much less dense than water. There is of course a portion which remains dissolved in the ocean, and a portion which ends up in the seabottom sediment. Are those portions large enough to significantly reduce the rate of climate change? I don't know, but many of the blogging marine biologists I am aware of seem to think it doubtful; see Chris Rowan (Deep Sean News) or David Archer (on RealClimate)

Correcting an error in my previous post (#4), Chris Rowan is not a marine biologist, and he blogs at Highly Allochthonous (not Deep Sea News).
I apologize for the confusion - and for not having many links to marine biologists who oppose iron fertilization.

I see no reason not to research it - perhaps even do a small-scale experiment if one can be devised to answer the question of how much of the C stays in the sea. It's obviously a worse idea than cutting emissions, but it would be nice to have as a strategic reserve.

Plenty of research has been done in this arena (like the Boyd et al. experiment linked to in this post), though none of it in Galapagos. While I do see the value in the experimentation, I also see the value in protecting one of the world's greatest marine sanctuaries and buffering that area from any potential catastrophes. But, at the moment, the precautionary principle seems to be highly unfashionable.

Anybody who argues that we understand ocean ecosystems well
enough to predict and mitigate any undesirable side effects
of iron supplements is delusional. I quote from the abstract:
"Our findings demonstrate that iron supply controls phytoplankton growth and community composition during summer in these polar Southern Ocean waters, but the fate of algal carbon remains unknown ..."

I'd like to see it studied, and possibly tested on a small scale. It sounds promising, and I think active efforts to repair environmental damage should be part of our response to global warming and atmospheric degradation-- even if reducing our fossil fuel consumption remains the core.

That said, doesn't this sound JUST like the kind of well intentioned thing we'd manage to screw up royally with long term damage as a result? I'm thinking it doesn't sound ready for prime time.

Haven't we learned that a lot of the stuff we dump in the ocean comes back to haunt us?

* mustard & other chemical weapon agents
* old tire artificial reefs (now being cleaned up)
* sewage & such (coming back to "fertilize" our beaches)

Based on this track record, doesn't it make more sense to stop producing rather than trying to sequester?